of freedom of speech and assembly, but he finished last in the polls. Although the split from the APCF had caused less than amicable relations between it and the USM, the two attempted to reconcile throughout the 1930s in the spirit of cooperation between like-minded groups. Aldred aimed to build an "anti-parliamentary international" that would unite the APCF and USM with the remains of the Communist Workers' International (CWI), as well as the US-based Communist League of Struggle (CLS) and United Workers Party (UWP), which rejected working together. The CLS leader Vera Buch arrived in Glasgow in May 1935 to discuss with the USM the formation of a Fourth International, encouraging the USM to unite with the APCF, but relations were soon severed following her departure due to disagreements over political differences and financial arrangements. Aldred's attempts to construct this new international were stillborn, with the USM and APCF remaining largely uninfluential and continuing to feud over their small differences. Guy Aldred's central role in the USM and his tendency to "ignore organisations and work on his own initiative" was denounced by other members of the organisation, some of whom resigned in June 1935 out of frustration with his "domineering personality". Out of a growing sense of pessimism with the revolutionary prospects in Britain, Aldred decided it was "imperative that Anti-Parliamentarism should be heard again" and in May 1936 launched the USM's new journal Attack, which only lasted a single issue. In an article he wrote for Attack, Aldred argued for the role of workers' councils in the construction of a transitional dictatorship of the proletariat, rejecting the "substitutionism" of a revolutionary vanguard taking power on the workers' behalf and warning that a party dictatorship would inevitably lead to the establishment of a new ruling class. Organising around the Spanish Civil War Following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, which Aldred proclaimed to be "the mighty proletarian movement that Europe needed", the USM once again saw a surge in activity. In August 1936 the USM founded the semi-weekly newspaper Regeneracion and began to hold frequent open-air meetings which, according to John Taylor Caldwell, "drew bigger crowds than at any time since the general strike". In a meeting on 11 August, the USM called on workers' organisations to convene meetings in solidarity with the Spanish Republicans and condemned Stanley Baldwin's National Government for not itself supporting the Spanish Republic. They